Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Morning at the spa

The spa robes are a shade of bright cyan that's unflattering to all complexions, but they're better than running around naked all day (and so excellent for selling more spa services!). The T-shirt that hit a snag -- literally (side-eyes cat, who promptly denies having claws while flexing them lazily) -- was equally unflattering on me.

When I finally managed to read the stamp on Experimental Subject #3's back, she turned out to be another Mattel doll. She is Kayla from Fashion Fever -- Wave F, circa 2004.

Here's a close-up of that model of Kayla's head, on a Fashionista body: http://surfinie.blog.cz/1110/kayla-fashion-fever-wave-f

Kayla's barbiebio says she's from New Zealand, so the darker skin means she's Maori? Or just extremely well-tanned?

Appropriately for a person who's here to have her identity erased -- on top of everything else, she has wonky eyes, so definite repaint candidate -- Experimental Subject #1 is a pain to identify. It turns out that I'm incapable of spotting the subtle differences among Barbie head sculpts once the face paint is on, so I'm not even sure if she's a Teresa or an early Summer. Teresa's Hispanic, while Summer's an Aussie, but with Barbie, ethnic differences are a bit of a crap shoot.

The biggest clue to her identity is her large, flat feet.

A poster on Legendary Tutorials helpfully did a photographic comparison of flat-footed Barbie feet. Yes, at midnight, I was staring at Barbie feet. Experimental Subject #1 has the Fiesta Tropical feet. This still doesn't help in determining her exact identity, as every image of a non-modded doll from this line turns out to be a tiny eBay or Amazon photo of the dolls NRFB, with glare from the box plastic obscuring their faces.

Back at the house, Cleo and Hattie sit on the patio with Sophie, who's trying to decide how much it's safe to tell them about the spa's real purpose.